Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Here's an update to a chart I posted a month ago. To be honest, the improvement in trade is not what I had expected. Outbound container shipments at both ports did not reflect any significant gains or losses in April. Similarly, the GDP statistics did not reflect any significant rise in goods exports for March, as I had expected would happen.

This is not necessarily bearish, however. As the chart shows, there is no sign of any deterioration in exports, and every reason to expect that they have bottomed and are likely to rise in coming months.

3 comments:

Off the topic, I see big hedge funds like John Paulson, David Einhorn et all buying huge positions in gold etf, gold companies, etc... Do you think gold prices can be legally pushed up materially (manipulation is too strong a word) up by these type of funds, just like commodities in 2008, or is gold too large a market to be impacted by these guys? Just wondering in terms of being an investor in gold as an inflation hedge.

The amount of gold outstanding in the world is worth about $3 trillion (roughly--you can check the World Gold Council for stas). I don't think hedge funds can buy enough gold to seriously distort the price. That's one of the reasons gold is a excellent thing to watch, since it is such a huge market. All the gold ever produced is still held by someone somewhere. Something like 120,000 tons of the stuff.